Auxxo, a German VC firm investing solely in female-founded startups, is today announcing a first close of its second fund.
The Berlin-based firm — founded by two of Germany’s most well-known angel investors, Gesa Miczaika and Bettine Schmitz — has raised €26m for the new fund, which has a target of up to €50m.
Auxxo raised its first fund of €19m in 2021 to get more capital into female-founded ventures. In 2024, female founders raised just 12% of total VC funding in Europe.
Half of the investors in the fund are also women — including Martina Pfeifer and Petra Wörwag from female network Encourage Ventures and VCs like Miki Yokoyama, a partner at Aurum Impact. Other LPs include the European Investment Fund, Speedinvest, Cherry Ventures and GPs from Capnamic Ventures.
“Women need capital and network. What they need is to raise the funds to create the big companies of the next generation, and then it will be a flywheel,” says Miczaika.
With its first fund, Auxxo backed companies such as green chemicals startup Dude Chem, digital receipt platform AnyBill and Flexa, a platform for jobs with flexible work options.
The strategy
The new fund will invest in approximately 30 pre-seed and seed stage startups across Europe that have at least one female founder who must hold at least 20% of the company’s founder shares.
Initial ticket sizes will be between €350-800k for a 3-8% stake in the business.
Auxxo has increased the ownership it takes in startups (with the last fund, it took 3-5%) as founders want the firm to co-lead rounds, say Auxxo’s GPs.
The firm will save half of the fund for follow-on investments.
“That’s why this fund is a lot bigger than the old fund — we now have firepower for follow-on tickets,” says Miczaika.
Building bridges
Auxxo raised its first fund in the heyday of 2021 when capital was free-flowing and there was real momentum among startups and VCs to make European tech more diverse.
“It was so easy because everyone had capital,” says Schmitz, adding that this time around, it was much harder to raise.
“The timing was bad, but the second thing was that our topic of diversity was the uncoolest kid on the block.”
Against a difficult backdrop, firms investing in female founders have continued to raise sizable funds this year: Austrian early stage VC firm Fund F closed a €28m fund in February, surpassing its initial target of €20m.
“It’s been an entrepreneurial experience and we had to learn and it was really tough, but no founder can tell us we don’t know how to fundraise,” says Schmitz. “We really had to make a proper project out of it.”
Auxxo aims to connect female-founded startups to established VC firms that can help them find a lead investor or provide follow-on financing.
“We build the bridge between the very male-dominated VC world and diverse teams. We need the men, otherwise we’re never going to reach some kind of balance,” says Schmitz. “The magic is in the collaboration.”
The firm has made three investments with its new fund: Emidat, which offers climate data infrastructure for the construction industry; Resolution, an AI-powered platform solving commercial legal disputes; and Stanhope.ai, which is applying neuroscience principles to create human-like AI for robots.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/auxxo-first-close-second-fund/
